when you come home
by sparkstoaflame
Summary: And all Bolin can do is wait. Borra. One-shot.


**when you come home**

_Canon._

And all Bolin can do is wait.

Borra.

* * *

_cover image credit to_ **hubedihubbe**

* * *

_A voice said, Look me in the stars _

_And tell me truly, men of earth, _

_If all the soul-and-body scars _

_Were not too much to pay for birth._

* * *

**i** | sunset

* * *

_(packs up all her bags)_

When she leaves, she does so quietly and without warning.

She also takes a piece of your heart with her.

-**sunset**-

You find yourself drifting through the world like a ghost; days and nights slip between the cracks of your cupped hands like swirling water as you vainly try to keep them within your crumbling grasp.

Your formerly vibrant green eyes, now dull and devoid of even the smallest spark of life, stare into the distance, glazed over, fixing its gaze up upon the sky without seeing the soft blue and purple streaks that lap across the horizon to announce the arrival of dusk.

_(and now she's heading for the sun)_

You can see a smear of her clear cerulean irises in the colors of the darkening sky, and your eyes drop down, down towards your lap, a nameless and late prayer upon your lips, for what could have been, what _would_ have been.

What is left of your heart shatters into a million pieces.

-**sunset**-

_"If you could do anything, what would it be?"_

_She smiles at you; a dazzling white grin that has never failed to blind you and does not disappoint now, either. "I would fly."_

_You look at her, puzzled. "But...you do fly. You do it every day with airbending."_

_Dark brown locks swish gently through the air along with the soft shake of her head; brown, tapered fingers pluck at the grass before carefully pinching a white, fluffy weed at its stem, and she nonsensically states, "I like dandelions."_

_"Dandelions?"_

_"I know that they're not the prettiest flower," she continues softly, head bending down to examine a small piece of white fluff that has landed on the tip of her calloused pointer finger, "but I like them just for that. They're simple, they're easy to understand. They have no secrets. Not like this hopelessly tangled world of politics and sabotage that Republic City, or metropolises such as Ba Sing Se and Omashu, is always caught up in."_

_And you wonder why she tries to think so much with a single weed that used to be the color of the midday sun._

-**sunset**-

But now you know.

A bouquet of yellow and white flowers are clutched in your grip.

The simple blue granite headstone blankly stares back at you.

_(souls sinking into shadows)_

"...Congratulations, Korra." The soft flutter of your breath emanating from your lips set the seeds twirling, bobbing through the warm breeze that shakes the orange autumn leaves from their perch on dry brown branches.

"You're finally flying."

* * *

**ii** | starlight

* * *

He begins to drift away: away from you, away from his best friend. Just like the little seeds of a dandelion flitting through the air that you know (and he knew) she loved to watch so much.

Oftentimes, you wake up prematurely in your bunk at the Air Temple Island to a sound outside your door, and your palm lights up with orange flames that dance through the air—

_(like a leaf in the wind)_

—and then you realize that it's your broken and moping mess of a brother, who reassures you every night ("Just taking a stroll, Mako," he says, but you know better than to believe the words of a heartsick boy) that he needs fresh air, and you and Asami have long since realized that those words translate to "looking for Korra".

You can't find it in your heart to tell him that—

_"Korra's been dead for a year, Bolin."_

-**starlight**-

You find the green-eyed boy at the entrance of her old room, forehead pressed against the flimsy bamboo-and-paper screen of the area. He's motionless; standing as still as a bare tree in the frozen depths of winter.

Part of you wonders how long he's been standing there like that.

The other part doesn't want to know. Because seeing Bolin like this will only make him want to cry, too.

-**starlight**-

The Order of the White Lotus has the nerve to ask if your brother would, pretty please, become the newly recognized Avatar Liang's earthbending teacher.

_Liang_ means _bright_.

But you suddenly remember Korra grumbling on about how the White Lotus were a bumbling bunch of fools, and you realize that where the floor meets the wall someone didn't paint it very well.

_(this must be the epitome of cruel)_

Bolin shakes off your murmured platitudes and accepts the invitation.

The last thing you note about Liang is that the fourteen-year-old boy's first earthbending lesson starts with an unwilling game of hide-and-go-seek on your brother's part, and you think irritably that _Korra never would have hid from her lessons._

-**star****light**-

_"She's going to come back from the Fire Nation next month," he cheerfully tells you, bright green eyes sparkling with happiness and delight in the golden glow of the summer sun._

_You shrug indifferently, hunched over your rickety wooden desk as you struggle over the mountain of paperwork Chief Lin Beifong has practically buried you into. "That's what she said last time, and then she ran off to settle some drug trafficking incident in Omashu."_

_You can practically hear the pout upon the earthbender's lips. "She _promised_ she would come back this time..."_

_And a twitch twists the corners of your lips up into a smile._

* * *

**iii **| sunrise

* * *

Yes, she promised you that she would come back after her six-month entrance at the Fire Nation.

But _no_, she just _had_ to get herself killed in that accursed palace by some assassin's arrow that wasn't even meant for her.

_This is all the fucking lunatic of a Fire Lord's fault._

-**sunrise**-

It's raining, and the dandelions you put on her tombstone a week ago are wilting. Waterlogged black hair drips in front of your eyes, but you can't bring yourself to care.

She _lied_ to you.

-**sunrise**-

Twelve and a half years later a fully-realized Avatar Liang dies in a skirmish between the old Ozai loyalists and the forces of Fire Lord Liqun.

You can't help but think of the fact that he died young.

_Just like her._

-**sunrise**-

Avatars come and go like water in a sieve, and you wryly notice that the average lifespan of the master of all four elements has become disgustingly short ever since Avatar Aang walked upon the soil of the Four Nations.

-**sunrise**-

It comes to an end, a quiet end, after sixty-three years.

But you see the baby first. The baby, whose eyes open for the first time, just as yours are about to close for the last.

The baby has her eyes.

_(and this is how it ends)_

You see her as you first saw her: a young, curious seventeen-year-old girl, and your fingers instinctively reach out to curl tightly around hers.

Her lips brush the tip of your left ear, and in a soft whisper, she murmurs,

_"Found you."_

-**sunrise**-

The rising sun is well into painting hues of brilliant reds and oranges over the ocean's horizon while the first streak of daybreak appears.

It's a small daub of blue the color of the sea.


End file.
